National Honor Society Strips Student Of Title Because Of Her Dress

Cameron Boland is the president of her junior class at Fort Myers High School in Fort Myers, Florida, captain of the basketball team, delegate for the leadership camp Girl State and historian for her school’s National Honor Society chapter.

She recently ran for historian of the National Honor Society for the country and won, but less than an hour after being elected, she was stripped of her title for wearing a dress with spaghetti straps during her speech at Ida Baker High School.

Boland, 17, who ran unopposed, was aware of the dress code at Ida Baker “… but not going there, I didn’t think it applied to me, I am not one of their students. Also, being an extracurricular activity an event, I didn’t feel a need to comply with the dress code,” she said.

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Officials, who apparently came from many different schools in the district, would not budge on their decision. “We put our jackets on and asked if we could apologize and redo our speech and we were told no,” Boland said.

Boland was disqualified on a hot May day in southwest Florida. “That day she wanted to look nice and she wore her sundress — she had a jacket and she removed it because she was hot,” the student’s mother, Caroline Boland, told Yahoo Parenting. “She usually wears jeans and T-shirts, but she wore the dress because it was an election, and she wanted to look presentable. It wasn’t an act of defiance or to be alluring, she wanted to look nice for the people voting.”

No one stopped Boland from giving her speech in her sundress and she will appeal the decision.

“(Cameron) sent me a text saying she was ‘super excited’ because now she was historian for the whole county,” Caroline said. “Forty-one minutes later she sent another text saying, ‘I was disqualified because my shoulders were bared and that is a dress code violation.’”

Another student who did not run for the position has since been named historian.